NEW HAVEN, Conn. - For the 2009 season, Yale gymnastics head coach Barbara Tonry has put together an eclectic season for her team. The schedule will be exciting yet challenging, as the Bulldogs have 11 straight competition weekends spanning from January to March. Among the more rarely seen teams in the line-up are SUNY Cortland and Arizona. SUNY Cortland, a Division III school, placed third at last year's NCGA Championships, where three returning gymnastics received All-American honors. Arizona placed fourth in the Pac-10 Championships in 2008. Yale will also face yearly regulars such as Bridgeport, New Hampshire, Rutgers and Towson at least once each, and will host both the Ivy League Classic and the ECAC Championship.

Yale opens at MIT on Jan. 10 in a six-way meet. The next week takes the Bulldogs to Penn's Hutchinson Gymnasium. Yale has won three out of the past five meetings between the teams. Tonry's team will face Bridgeport the next two weekends, first in a tri-meet with UNH, then for the first home meet of the season solely against the Purple Knights.

The beginning of February takes Yale to Rutgers, then to the New Hampshire Invitational with Air Force and Bridgeport. The Bulldogs return home for two weekends for a dual meet against SCSU, then to host the rest of the Ivy League. On Feb. 28, Brown, Cornell and Penn will descend upon the John J. Lee Amphitheater for the Ivy League Classic, which was last held at Yale in 2005, when the Bulldogs were crowned champions.

While their classmates are on spring break, Yale's gymnasts will face some of the most challenging events of their season. First is Towson, four-time reigning ECAC champion. Then they head to the University of Maryland for a quad meet with Arizona and Penn State. Lastly, Yale returns home to host the 2009 ECAC Championship, hoping to improve on their seventh-place finish from last year.

The Bulldogs hope for members to qualify for the NCAA Regionals in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on Apr. 3-4. In New Haven the following weekend, Yale will compete in the Collegiate National Championships hosted by SCSU.